Spotify Premium now available for Linux

Until now Spotify, the streaming music service, has only been available to Windows and Mac users. But today Spotify is announcing support for Linux.

Linux support has been added based on community feedback, but also through Spotify developers taking the time to push it out during hack days and their spare time after normal working hours. The motivation wasn’t just to please the Spotify community, it was also because a number of those Spotify developers use Linux machines at work so it was in their interest to add this support.

Although Linux support now exists, there are some missing features existing Windows and Mac versions currently enjoy. First of all, Spotify hasn’t managed to figure out ad serving on Linux yet so only Spotify Premium subscribers can gain access to this version. Secondly, decoding of local music is still being worked on, so there’s no local files feature.

Spotify is promising to continue development and add new features as they arrive in the Windows and Mac versions. If you run Linux and want to try this first unsupported preview release head on over to the Spotify preview page.

Even though Linux holds a very small share of the OS market there are advantages to supporting it. A small market still means thousands of potential premium subscribers, and Linux support now means simpler porting for future operating systems coming to market.

Google Chrome OS is just around the corner, and being an OS built on Linux it may be that Spotify Linux support allows for a simple development update to create Spotify for Chrome OS. Chrome OS is sure to be a big market for Spotify if it manages to build a healthy consumer user base, which is clearly what Google is aiming for.

If the Spotify team can get feature parity on the Linux version there’s sure to be a lot of happy users out there willing to hand over some cash every month. Figuring out ad serving, and pushing the free version of Spotify out to Linux will also help grow the market for Spotify in the long term.